Rays, Ripples, Residue: 421 Arts Campus reflects on decade of creativity in the UAE

In a photograph from his Abu Dhabi Archipelago series, Tarek Al-Ghoussein sits on top of a slide in an empty children’s playground, staring pensively at the residential compound that barely enters the frame. The image stutters between the peaceful and the haunting. It can be read as an achievement of solitude or an entanglement with loneliness.

The photograph was taken in 2015, when Al-Ghoussein set out to Abu Dhabi’s 215 islands. Instead of taking journalistic approach to documenting the islands, which are mostly either uninhabited or rarely visited, the late photographer put himself in the works, turning the images into performative, autobiographical compositions.

In 2018, Al-Ghoussein presented works from Abu Dhabi Archipelago at 421 Arts Campus. The show was curated by ­Munira Al Sayegh, who is now revisiting the series in Rays, Ripples, Residue, an exhibition at the institution dedicated to its 10th anniversary.

Al Sayegh presents the works close to their original curation in terms of arrangement, but with a different intent. As the curator of the first segment of Rays, Ripples, Residue, she shows how key instigators, such as Al-Ghoussein, inspired and influenced a new generation of practitioners. It is a potent place from which to begin looking back on a decade of artistic practice in the UAE.

Some of these influences are immediately apparent, such as with the photographs of Khaled Esguerra.

Tarek Al-Ghoussein. Abu Dhabi Archipelago (series), 2015.